Demo -- Update
Rskutins recorded his drum part and sent it to me via the wonders of TCP/IP netowrking. On Friday night I finally had enough time (and motivation) to start recording.

I spent a lot of time fighting with ProTools. It repeatedly crashed. Often, when it didn't crash, it simply stopped recording and reported that an error had occurred. I'm remembering this for the ProTools rant that will be coming in the future.

After 45 minutes I had recorded about 6 seconds of vocals and the 24 second bass line. The next block of Copious Free Time(TM) I have, I'll begin the rough mix of the three parts. Hopefully ProTools won't crash as often during that phase.

With any luck, it'll be mixed in the next week or two.

[/album] [permanent link]

Philadelphia
The night before I woke up every hour, looked at the clock, said "I have N hours before I need to get up" and went back to sleep.

I lost a lot of fluids because I couldn't turn the temperature in the room down and spent the night sweating. When I got up I drank a lot of water and GuBrew, but as it turns out, not enough.

The weather was good, about 46 at the start. It was sunny, which was quite a problem when I got a migraine at mile 8. It took me about a mile to get my imitrex out of my pocket and actually take it. At the half I was still close to the 3:20 pacer and I considered taking the turn for the finish line, but decided to keep going.

As the nausea from the migraine subsided, I started getting a stomach cramp. At mile 17 I stopped at medical. After some back and forth the decided the cramp was likely due to dehydration and they made me sit and drink in front of them for 15 to 20 minutes before they cleared me to continue.

After that I went on my way at a much slower pace. At about mile 24 one of my teammates, Tom, caught up to me (this was his 19th race at marathon or greater distance). He paced me and got me through to the end.

I ended up finishing at 3:55:46, far off from my goal. But now I know I can finish the distance so it's just a matter of doing it faster. I'd like to get two more in before New York next November.

Right now, I feel much better than I thought I would. It was weird, when I woke up this morning, I was walking around the hotel room for a half hour feeling just fine. Then I put my shoes on and everything from my feet to my shoulders started hurting. That's more-or-less subsided now, thankfully.

[/running] [permanent link]

... On man pages, a mini-rant
I really despise the linux man pages. They're useless at best and wrong at worst.

From the man page for setsockopt: "The include file <sys/socket.h> contains definitions for socket level options, described below."

1) The options are not "described below."
2) No, that file actually doesn't contain those definitions.

On the other hand... The FreeBSD man page for setsockopt does actually describe the options and under FreeBSD the <sys/socket.h> file does indeed contain the definitions.

[/unix] [permanent link]

An Awesome Christmas Present
I waited until to today to verify that it wasn't just a random occurrence. I checked again this morning and it was the same as yesterday.

I gave myself one of the best Christmas presents I've ever received. It took me about nine months to accomplish it, but I gave myself a new body, and more positive perspective on life.

As of yesterday, I have lost 101 pounds (45.8Kg for those of you who prefer the metric system) and over nine inches (22.86 cm) from my waistline.

A friend of mine told me tonight that, her doctor had told her recently that people can live much better lives, with fewer ailments, if they just made simple life changes. She said that having watched me over the last year transform my body, my mind, and my life, she found me to be a good model for positive changes people can make in their lives. As much as hitting the century mark meant to me, her words meant even more.

I've been thinking about this for a while and I think I'm going to become a motivational speaker. I want to help people change their lives for the better.

[/musings] [permanent link]

If all goes according to plan...
This time tomorrow, my car should be on its way to Texas.

[/dmc] [permanent link]

Fun Conversations
The DeLorean often leads to conversations one wouldn't normally expect. Case in point: today I had to call my auto insurance provider for an issue with my daily driver. After taking some info to pull up my account the conversation went something like this:

Agent: Which car is this?
Me: The Pontiac.
Agent: Am I reading this right?
Me: Reading what?
Agent: I'm sorry, do you have a DeLorean?
Me: Yes.
Agent: I never thought I'd see someone with a policy on a DeLorean.
Me: Well, you've insured both of mine...
Agent: You've had two DeLoreans?
Me: Yes.

At that point there were a few more questions and then we got back to the issue which my phone call had been about originally.

[/dmc] [permanent link]

1449069975
https://www.instagram.com/p/-ywsdLrXFZ/

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[/mobile] [permanent link]

An Observation
There is something satisfying about driving in a DeLorean while listening to The Clash's Live: From Here to Eternity.

[/dmc] [permanent link]

Initial Thoughts on Windows 10 -- UPDATED!
I'm done with Microsoft for any platform that is not a telephone. Windows 10 attempts to "fix" the abomination that was windows 8 on the desktop, but just makes things worse.

The "search" "app" that replaces the previous existing search feature really only sends a query to bing. I'm looking for a file somewhere in a subdirectory on my hard drive. I didn't want to search the web for 20141020*.txt. The UI looks like crap. Slapping a titlebar on top of the "modern" "apps" does not make them usable on the desktop. The start menu has returned, but it has never been this useless. And the ability to revert to the "classic" start menu, the behavior introduced in windows 95, and refined in win98 and Windows 2000, has been removed. I shouldn't be surprised by that given that Windows 7 also lacked the "classic" start menu. At least Windows 7 allowed a "Windows Classic" theme for the rest of the UI.

Ever since Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, MS has been slowly and surely trying to make things "easier." However, what they deem "easier" often means removing features and behaviors I relied on to get work done. Windows 10 continues this tradition.

I never really had a problem with Microsoft, I never avoided their software for ideological reasons. I believe in using the right tool for the job. Windows 10 is the wrong tool for any job.

UPDATE!!!

Using the Windows Update mechanism, MS pushed out a new build of Windows 10. This upgraded the installation from build 9841 to build 9860. After a lengthy download, installation, and a very long reboot, I was able to log in again, Only to be greeted by this:



And this lovely error when I tried to open the new "Notification Center":



Now isn't that special?

[/musings] [permanent link]